No Use Going Back to Yesterday, I Was a Different Person Then
by yuffiehighwind
Summary: Jefferson wakes up in Storybrooke for the first time.


_**Summary:**__ Jefferson wakes up in Storybrooke for the first time. _

_**Notes: **__Based on episodes up through S2 Ep 11 "The Outsider." Part of my series "Some Kind of Madness." Wrote this back in January. Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own. __(To add some explanation: In "Some Kind of Madness," like Jefferson tells Emma and David in the episodes 'Hat Trick' and 'We Are Both,' he has both sets of memories - his own and the Jefferson from Storybrooke's. Like he tells Emma in 'Hat Trick,' Regina's Curse left him 'stuck in this house.' In my fanfics he isn't literally stuck. His new identity has agoraphobia. Of sorts. I apologize for inaccuracies about real agoraphobia.)_

* * *

**No Use Going Back to Yesterday;**

**I Was a Different Person Then**

The Hatter rarely slept, and his friends, if he could even call them that, didn't encourage him. He and the March Hare would shout at the Dormouse to wake up, and when he was lucid he envied the rodent.

If he could shut off his mind for more than three hours a night, he would. He could faintly remember days passed out with no care at all for the time or where he had to be next. Long before he was a parent - a baby matures you _fast_ - and sometime after…the Hat. Back when he could make it _work_, when a gateway was opened to him and his career as a thief soared from pickpocket to mercenary to legend. A bag of gold bought a downy bed in a proper furnished room with fine roasted meat and red wine, beautiful young women, and eight hours at the very _least_ before he had to grab the hat and run again, trouble at his heels but oh so very _worth_ it.

He needed it to work to be a parent again, which meant little sleep but still more sleep than _this_.

"Move down!" he shouted at the Hare, who tolerated his angry outbursts because his wits weren't all there either. The friends pushed down the table - scattered with fresh pots of tea intermingled with old molding ones. The Dormouse languidly dozed in an empty pot.

"What time is it?" the Hatter asked, anxious to get back to work, but the Hare sat looking dumbfounded at something over his shoulder. The Hatter turned around.

And smiled.

* * *

Jefferson woke up.

His mind registered the bed first - one more comfortable than any other he had slept in. He turned over and opened his eyes. The ornate bedroom was unfamiliar, its decor cold and nothing like home.

He shook off sleep - the same sleep he had been craving for so long - and sat up.

"Grace!" he called. He pushed back the covers and stood. "Grace!"

Rushing past countless doors - down an elaborate staircase and into a house decorated more like a palace than any house he'd had in years - he called his daughter's name with restrained urgency, and finally the frantic, strangled shouts of the madman he'd become. He searched every room, stomach hungry and bladder bursting, before giving up and sitting down to think things through.

A curious feeling overtook him in the kitchen, of unease and achingly lonely regret that he _had_ no children to miss. He wondered how things were back _home_, flashes of metal towers and unfamiliar faces crossing his mind, eliciting confusion from the Hatter and nostalgia from Jefferson.

Sighing, Jefferson retrieved a brown powder that wasn't tea - the Hatter had drank it in Agrabah - and put some in a white paper cup, inside a black machine attached to a kettle, like it was second nature. Poured water into a compartment, hit a button and listened as it sputtered to life.

Making coffee wasn't alien to the Hatter, but how did he know how to make it like _this?_

His stomach growled. He couldn't find Grace on no food. He had starved himself enough in Wonderland.

_Omelet_, he thought, which wasn't unlike home at all, but he shrugged in laziness and grabbed frozen bread from the icebox and put it in another machine. After a couple minutes, it popped up brown and smelling of berries. He poured sweet syrup over it.

_Eggo waffles and weak coffee,_ Jefferson thought. _What a fabulous life._

Jefferson went upstairs to get dressed, relieved to find a closet full of fine clothes in the strange style he had always loved.

"Grace would like this," he thought, smiling, then said aloud, because who else was here but the imposter that shared his head? He shed his pajama pants and pulled on trousers. Grabbed a silk shirt and embroidered waistcoat and went to the mirror to dress. He dropped them and his hands went to his throat.

The Hatter had mirrors in Wonderland, but they were distorted funhouse mirrors. He'd rubbed the wound and wrapped scarves like bandages around it. Tied them expertly, as he'd always done. Always been fond of doing.

But he never got a good look.

Whoever owned this house and possessed his body let out a strangled scream. Tore at his hair and let the sound escape again. Both men collapsed to the floor and huddled there, breathing heavily, wondering when the nightmare would end and when they could go home.

After gaining his bearings, the Hatter somberly dressed and headed downstairs, to seek Grace, or information, glean anything he could from his new surroundings, but he stopped at the threshold, like some force was preventing his exit. He took a breath and looked out at the mansion's beautiful porch and long driveway. Its trees, grass and garden. He could hear the sound of birds. This was no topsy turvy Wonderland. This was an entirely different world, and the air tasted differently and he had never been here before.

He stepped onto the porch, except he hadn't. He couldn't even get his arm out, not really. His hand stayed glued to the doorknob and an overwhelming terror gripped his heart and he slammed the door shut.

"No, no, no," Jefferson murmured, while the Hatter, frustrated, screamed inside his head to just be a man and start searching for Grace.

"I can't go outside," he said. "I'm not _ready_. I _can't._"

_"You can! What are you waiting for?"_

"I need just a few more days."

_"What are you talking about? What happened to you?"_

Jefferson had no answer for him. He covered his face and bolted for the bathroom.

"Stop it! Stop! Who's Grace?"

_"Your daughter, you lunatic! She needs you!"_

Jefferson's hands scrambled for the cabinet, for orange bottles within it. He poured some pills on the sink top and carefully picked out two. He filled a small paper cup with water and swallowed the pills along with it. Confused, the Hatter continued his mad conversation with the mirror. Jefferson adjusted his new ascot and smoothed out his hair.

_"We're trying every door in this palace. Surely one will let us step outside."_

"…_Me_. I mean me. There's only one of me."

He tried every door.

He tried every door every hour of every day that week, until he began to wonder if Grace was even real.

The girl danced through his dreams, and ran through the trees calling out, "Papa! Where are you?" Sometimes she looked stricken with despair, and he could never reach her. Some nights he took her hand and her smile lit up like a Solstice tree. He held her and they laughed and cried together until he woke up.

Some nights he dreamed of a youth of luxury among the metal towers, of decadent immaturity, of an adulthood focused on moneymaking and no permanent attachments. Of losing a wife to indifference and not…and not the way the Hatter had lost his. Of never knowing True Love, of abusing alcohol and drugs and letting an illness get the best of him and losing his father and livelihood and being banished to Maine.

Jefferson had patched his wits back together only to lose them again sharing a brain under house arrest.

He distracted himself with music and TV and books, masturbation and exercise, and food and alcohol, and a room he found that was…

…full of fabric.

Cloths, threads, needles, scissors…all the materials he'd need…Oh! His endless quest continued. He sat down and before he knew it, the Hatter had made three more perfect duds. He put one on and went back downstairs. He placed it on the floor and rotated it.

Nothing. Foolish. His wife used to turn it carefully like that. She never had any style. It needed to _fly!_

He tossed the hat a few feet. It landed on the carpet with a soft thud.

No portal.

Jefferson tried again. And again. He gripped the brim and resisted screaming. That had never served him well back in Wonderland.

"Get it to _work_," he murmured, and the only thing keeping him from devolving into the barely coherent Mad Hatter was _Jefferson's_ insistence it was just a fairytale and he was being irrational. Magic didn't work here because magic didn't exist. Better to relax and let go of such fictions and recover. It would help if he could get some fresh air. But he couldn't even turn the doorknob today.

Finally someone showed up at the door. A delivery truck, with food! Shaking, Jefferson turned the knob, and a kind young man was tentatively pressing the doorbell, giving Jefferson cautious, nervous smiles. He began to bring in food for the house, making idle conversation and asking if Jefferson needed any other assistance, like the trash pickups that were available.

They shook hands at the threshold as the boy left, and he drove off. Jefferson shut the door and not long after - though he couldn't name if it had been days, weeks, or months - opened it to find a long package. He unwrapped a gold telescope, and while it had no sender, he had a strong feeling who it could be.

He searched the surrounding area through every open window and finally saw her - his daughter, his Grace!

She looked almost exactly the same - a few years older, maybe, clad in this world's fashions and living with their neighbors. But these weren't the neighbors, were they?

"Mom" and "Dad," her lips mouthed, and when he finally, finally used every ounce of willpower to drag himself to his car - and eventually, to the end of the driveway, then the town, after what seemed like eons of struggle - he saw her with them at the elementary school and, eavesdropping, could really hear her say it.

It was true, she wanted for nothing, now. She didn't know who he was or that he was someone to miss.


End file.
